Latest news with #sport
Daily Mail
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Indigenous AFL star turned Logie winner Tony Armstrong claims Aussies have 'racism fatigue'
Popular TV star Tony Armstrong believes many Australians are experiencing 'racism fatigue' as he opens up about his upcoming documentary series. Armstrong, who departed ABC News Breakfast last year, is on a global quest to find solutions to racism in sport with his three-part documentary series, End Game. The 35-year-old former AFL player is searching for practical, lasting solutions to the problem - but thinks a lot of Aussies are tired of the issue. 'I guess people have got racism fatigue, which is cooked to say,' he told the Inherited podcast. 'But if I just say, "Hey guys, what the hell, racism sucks" people will say, "Oh, here's Tony again beating the drum with racism". 'As cynical as that is, that's where we are at. We saw how The Voice [referendum] went, my general temp check about the way people people are talking on social media, it's getting worse.' Armstrong says he wants to discover how to drive meaningful change, not just get people to agree that racism is a problem. 'We went to the UK - we spoke with the English Premier League, we spoke with players, we spoke with the police,' he said. 'We spoke with not-for-profit organisations about what they're doing to combat racism within the premier league and they are doing some amazing stuff. 'We went to the US and we spoke with the NBA, we spoke with some organisations in the NFL, we spoke to the LA Angels [baseball team]. 'With them, we go, what's working, what are the structural things you're doing - and we've brought back all that knowledge, and we've come back to Australia.' Armstrong says he is meeting with the heads of Australia's biggest sporting bodies to see what practical ideas could be adopted Down Under. Elsewhere on the episode, Armstrong spoke about why he left ABC News Breakfast. 'I decided about halfway through last year that was going to be it for breakfast [TV] because it was killing me,' he explained. 'Literally I ended up staying in bed for a month because I just couldn't get up.' 'I was rostered and I just couldn't get out of bed. Rona [his partner] was like "Look, your body is telling you that you need to resign." 'And I was like "but I've finally got a job that is secure" and you know what this business is like, it's pretty fickle and I've never really been someone who thinks "I'll be right, I'm established enough to do what I want." 'So Rona helped me get into the right headspace to leave telly. She got me to the line to look after my own health rather than job security, I suppose. 'I'm really proud that we were able to step away and I did that through her help. Vice versa she's stepped away a lot from her not-for-profits to chase her dreams in music. I'm proud of us for navigating how it all works.' Rona is the CEO of Common Ground, a First Nations not-for-profit organisation that works to amplify First Nations voices, and successful DJ who has performed at some of Australia's biggest music festivals. Tony and Rona went public with their romance in 2023, and are believed to have been together for three years. 'What a lot of people probably wouldn't realise is I had to write all my own scripts and produce all my own footage,' Tony said as he recalled his earliest days as a fill-in host and producer for ABC Sports Breakfast. 'I was a one-man-band.' 'The thing about news is because it's a 24 hour cycle, you can't prepare. You can't do your work early so you get in there and it's done. You're trying to get to bed early to get up at 3am or 4am. 'I hate mornings with a passion. I just do not like waking up. So those two things don't go together.'
BBC News
a day ago
- Health
- BBC News
North Yorkshire Mayor commits £3m to physical and mental health
More than £3m is to be invested in two schemes aimed at improving people's mental and physical health in North region's mayor, David Skaith, has committed £715,000 to improving men's mental health and a further £2.75m to helping rural and marginalised groups into said the issues were "personal" after struggling with his own mental health following the death of his father. Announcing the funding he said: "Suicide is a leading cause of death in men under 50 – it's a national tragedy." "After losing my dad, I struggled with my mental health and it took opening up, socialising and getting back into sport to start feeling better," he added."By taking a lead, we can directly tackle rural isolation and health inequalities - issues that York and North Yorkshire particularly struggle with."He said the programmes would work to tackle the financial barriers to sport and activity and to improve mental health support in "male-dominated and isolated jobs", such as farming, the emergency services and construction. The BBC's Action Line pages can provide support for people affected by a range of issues Paul Galdas, Chair of the Men's Mental Health Taskforce said it was important to "meet men where they are" and "adapting our services to fit the unique needs of men in our area".Lynne James, Manager of York-based mental health charity Mainstay, supported the allocation of funding but said she had "reservations" about how it would be distributed."It's saying 'we're not doing anything new- what we're going to try and do with this money is find ways that isolated communities, rural communities can access existing projects and sports activities'."[But] That's where I'm holding my breath to see how this plays out."Within rural communities, I think it's going to be more difficult."It depends how well organised the infrastructure of the rural communities is and what sports facilities already exist." Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
SBS Australia
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- SBS Australia
NITV Radio FULL - 21/07/2025
NITV Radio brings the latest is sport weather and news as well as stories of community from across the country. Indigenous-owned business Tidal Moon in Western Australia is drawing on traditional knowledge to bring back Australia's first ever export - the sea cucumber. Kitty Obsidian is a proud Wiradjuri/Gamilaroi trans performer and previous VIC NAIDOC LGBTIQ+ person of the year 2022, bringing their award winning brand of activism to their art. Sean Kinchela a Gamilaroi and Wiradjuri photographer is the recipient of the 2025 Indigenous Storytellers Scholarship announced by Façon Australia and Greater Bank. That and more on NITV Radio
New York Times
2 days ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Why do Test cricketers wear white?
Cricket is a sport that clings to tradition. It's the reason some love it, the comforting and familiar sights and sounds representing a still point in a turning world. The most visually immediate of those traditions — in multi-day red-ball cricket at least — is the white clothing. While most team sports mandate differing colours so spectators can tell the sides apart, for much of its history, cricketers have played some form of the game wearing all white. Or at least a sort of off-white/cream colour otherwise only seen on the walls of municipal office blocks. Advertisement Note the use of 'much of its history'. It would be easy to think that white has been the prevalent colour from the very start of the game until the present day. But that isn't quite the case, and it actually took about 150 years to become uniform. In the 1700s, the earliest days of what we would recognise as cricket now, a gentleman would dress for a game of cricket as a gentleman would dress for any aspect of gentlemanly life. Frilled shirts, silk stockings and buckled shoes, naturally. As the game evolved further, white was worn, although reliable documentation about how prevalent it was is relatively tricky to find. Still, in a book called 'Bat, Ball, Cricket And All', published in 1950, the MCC's first full-time curator and historian Diana Rait Kerr wrote: 'White has apparently been the prevailing dress of cricketers from very early times. Other fashions, as we shall see, intruded at later periods, but only to yield again to the blameless livery of old; indeed, one of the remarkable features of cricket has been the manner in which its milky costume has prevailed over all others.' Poems, like 'Cricket, An Heroic Poem' written by James Love in 1744, refer to players 'in decent white, most gracefully array'd', while paintings like 'Cricket as played on the Artillery Ground' from 1743 (see above) depict the players in white shirts. This was probably a consequence of the relatively ad hoc nature of cricket back then. Rait Kerr wrote that, when playing the game, gentlemen 'threw down their wide-brimmed hats, coats and smocks, and left them with the scorers, or their waiting companions, to take care of'. Or, to put it another way, remove their outer garments and play in their undershirts, which were usually white. By the early 1800s, trousers had replaced breeches, but coats were still commonly worn, and top hats too, and colours started to creep in. The MCC initially adopted a light blue colour, before switching to the red and yellow that it is synonymous with today. Men would often wear sashes and colourful belts, and coloured shirts started to appear around the 1850s, players representing whatever institution they were most proud of coming from — public schools, universities — with shirts and slightly less formal caps. Advertisement 'If you go back to the 1840s, 1850s,' says Neil Robinson, the head of heritage and collections at the MCC, 'you'll see illustrations of what was the all-England XI, which was the first professional team that toured around the country, taking advantage of the new railway network to take high-quality cricket to areas other than the south east of England. They used to wear white trousers, but shirts with pink or red spots.' It wasn't until the 1880s that, gradually, white shirts and trousers became the standard uniform for the respectable cricketer. But why? It would be great to tell you some romantic or sentimental story behind cricketers wearing white. Perhaps it was in tribute to a lost love of an MCC member. Maybe it was a reference to moral purity, an early visual indicator of the spirit of cricket. Could it have been a royal decree, Queen Victoria deciding that she would like to see her cricketing subjects gleaming in the English sun? Alas not. The primary motivations behind the prevailing colour for cricketers' clothing being white are rather boringly practical. Cricket is a summer sport, thus, in theory, games take place in the heat. White is generally regarded as being the best colour to wear in hot weather because it reflects heat, while darker shades absorb it. So in the interests of protecting the players from elevated temperatures as much as possible, white became commonplace and, eventually, uniform. That wasn't the only reason. White is also the best colour to contrast with the red ball. It is also probably the colour that most people had ready access to. It was also easiest to make uniform throughout the game. But broadly speaking, it became prevalent because of the heat thing. But it's never actually been formalised. There's nothing in the laws of the game specifying that Test teams must wear white, and there never has been. It just became a convention that has stuck. 'There's not a great deal of written evidence as to why white came into popular use,' says Robinson. 'A bit like cricket itself, whites just evolved into the accepted format that we know today. Advertisement 'I suppose this reflects the fact that the game hasn't always been played in whites and the Laws in the modern era do not distinguish between limited overs and first-class cricket. They're meant to be applicable at every level, even those where players can't necessarily be expected to have access to proper kit.' The good doctor, WG Grace, offered his own thoughts on how a cricketer should be attired in a book published in 1890 about cricket called, obliquely, 'Cricket'. Grace offers such sartorial notes as pointing out that 'braces are not worn when playing cricket', that 'nothing can look much worse in the cricket field than to see fieldsmen with their hands in their pockets' and that a jacket 'can be used when fielding, but certainly not when batting or bowling'. Take note. But on the matter of clothing colours, he wrote: 'It was not an unusual sight 10 or 20 years ago to find an XI or county 22 dressed in all the colours of the rainbow. White is now usually worn, and it certainly looks better and cooler than any other colour.' There, again, we have the point about it being a cooling colour. But is the theory sound? You can't necessarily blame the Victorians for not being fully across modern science, but the theory that white is better to wear in the heat is… a subject of debate, at least. While it's true that dark colours absorb heat, that's as much a positive as a negative. They do absorb the light from the sun, but also absorb and take away heat from our bodies, thus cooling us down. So would black have been a better bet? Or at least, equally as good? A study conducted in 1980 by academics from Tel Aviv University, who had observed members of Bedouin tribes wearing both white and black robes in the desert heat, suggested there was essentially no difference between the two in terms of keeping people cool. So if the Victorians did have access to modern science, and temperature was the primary motivator for their sartorial decisions, they might just as easily have chosen something much moodier. Still, white was the choice, and remained so in all forms of cricket until the late 1970s and the advent of World Series Cricket (WSC) in Australia. The great disruptive force in cricket's 20th century, WSC began as a power struggle between Kerry Packer's Channel 9 and the Australian Cricket Board over TV rights. When Packer didn't get them, he recruited the game's biggest names on much healthier wages — Test cricketers to that point having been paid a relative pittance in comparison to the money being made by the authorities — to play in his own series of games. Advertisement But while the start of WSC might have been about economics, it did feature several innovations that have since become entirely normal parts of the game, one of which was a move away from all-white clothing, which, like the introduction of whites in the first place, was born of necessity. Perhaps WSC's most successful innovation was day-night cricket, utilising the floodlights at VFL Park (an Australian rules football stadium that they were forced to use after being banned from all the major cricket venues in the country) to play at times more attractive to the paying public. The problem was that a red ball would not have been practical to use as it would be hard to see against the night sky. So for these games, they used white balls, initially with traditional white clothing, but after a while, it became clear that some contrast was required there, too. So in the second year of WSC, coloured kit was introduced, the Australian team decked out in a striking yellow/gold, the 'Rest of the World' team in blue, while the West Indies wore a sort of salmon-pink. This was regarded as a gimmick by many, not least by some West Indian players whose masculinity was challenged by their allocated colours, and for years afterwards, you would hear assorted bores refer to 'pyjama' cricket. But the gimmicks stuck, and those involved can legitimately claim to have been part of a revolution. 'What had gone before had all been so conservative,' said Tony Greig, a former England captain and one of the key recruits to WSC, in a documentary marking its 20th anniversary in 1997. 'We did bring it (cricket) to life: we turned on the lights, introduced the coloured clothing… they (WSC's critics) bagged us, they didn't understand what we were doing.' Still, the outrage did not extend to all the expected sources. Sir Donald Bradman, whose attitude to most things would generously be described as 'conservative', was prompted to comment on the coloured clothing by the Australian Cricket Board chairman Bob Parish. He replied, as recounted in Gideon Haigh's book about WSC, 'The Cricket War': 'Why should I? The Pinks played the Blues in Sydney in 1822. Coloured clothing means nothing.' Advertisement He wasn't quite right because coloured clothing is now used in all forms of limited-overs/white-ball cricket, but it took a while to catch on and properly spread. It wasn't until 1992 that it was used at the World Cup, and England were still playing one-day internationals in whites as late as 1997. Over the years, additions have been made — manufacturers' badges, sponsors' logos, squad numbers, players' names — to obscure the pure white of the shirts and trousers a little. But even now, England, India, Australia, the West Indies and the rest will turn out in their all-white clothing, just as they did over 150 years ago. Click here to follow cricket on The Athletic and see more stories like this.
CTV News
2 days ago
- Business
- CTV News
Sudbury's Valley East twin-pad arena gets $10M in provincial funding
The Minister of Sport announced $10 million for a state-of-the-art facility in Valley East featuring two NHL-sized accessible rinks and a multipurpose gymnasium The Ontario government is providing $12.6 million in funding to upgrade recreation facilities across northeastern Ontario, with the largest share – $10 million – going toward Greater Sudbury's long-awaited Valley East Twin-Pad Multipurpose Sports Complex. Neil Lumsden Ontario Minister of Sport Neil Lumsden announced $12.6 million in funding to upgrade recreation facilities across northeastern Ontario while in Greater Sudbury, Ont., on July 18, 2025. (Neil Lumsden/X) Provincial funding supports arena upgrades, economic growth The funding, announced Friday by Minister of Sport Neil Lumsden and Minister of Northern Economic Development George Pirie, is part of the province's $200 million Community Sport and Recreation Infrastructure Fund. The Greater Sudbury project, estimated at nearly $50 million, will feature two NHL-sized accessible rinks, a multipurpose gymnasium, daycare facilities, a café and administrative offices, positioning it as a community hub and potential event venue. 'The Twin Pads we have been talking about for over a decade now, but the city has always said we would only advance it if we had other levels of government funding,' said Greater Sudbury Mayor Paul Lefebvre. 'The province of Ontario established a $200 million fund for the whole province – we received 5% of that fund for Sudbury alone. That is the $10 million, which is really a recognition, I believe, by the province of the importance of Sudbury to the overall economy of Ontario.' Sport as an economic and social driver Minister Lumsden emphasized the broader impact of recreational investments, particularly in northern communities. 'I feel real strong that sport does so much more than just having people running around a field – it makes a big difference in communities,' he said. 'Especially on the sport tourism side, which drives revenue back into a community for weekends at a time. People don't always think about that, but it's important to all the businesses here.' Funding announcement - Sudbury - July 18 The Ontario government is providing $12.6 million in funding to upgrade recreation facilities across northeastern Ontario – including $10 million going toward Greater Sudbury's Valley East Twin-Pad Multipurpose Sports Complex. Greater Sudbury Mayor Paul Lefebvre, Algoma-Manitoulin MPP Bill Rosenberg, Ontario Minister of Sport Neil Lumsden and Minister of Northern Economic Development George Pirie are shown at the announcement in Greater Sudbury, Ont., on July 18, 2025. (Neil Lumsden/X) The province framed the funding as part of its strategy to counter rising costs while promoting active living and economic resilience. 'At a time when Ontario families are facing rising costs due to tariffs, our government is proud to support organizations focused on delivering better services,' Lumsden said in a news release on July 18. Smaller communities benefitting from repairs, upgrades Beyond Sudbury, the new sports infrastructure funding allocations include: $1 million to replace the aging refrigeration system at Espanola Arena with an energy-efficient CO₂ system. to replace the aging refrigeration system at with an energy-efficient CO₂ system. $614,600 for critical repairs at Kashechewan Arena , including roof replacement and safety upgrades. for critical repairs at , including roof replacement and safety upgrades. $585,250 for renovations at Markstay-Warren's Multiplex to expand programming like pickleball and Zumba. for renovations at to expand programming like pickleball and Zumba. $484,100 to replace the roof at Temiskaming Shores' Don Shepherdson Memorial Arena. Philip Goodwin, the executive director of Kashechewan First Nation, highlighted the significance of the funding for his remote community. 'In a fly-in access community, having an operational arena is critical to bring people together through hockey tournaments, cultural events, and community gatherings,' he said. 'These much-needed repairs mean our children, youth, families, and the wider community will continue to have a safe and welcoming space.' Northern priorities and long-term vision Minister Pirie tied the investments to broader regional development goals. 'By investing in important community spaces, our government is helping to ensure our northern communities have the resources to support their health and well-being now and in the future,' he said. Funding announcement - Sudbury - July 18 Ontario Minister of Sport Neil Lumsden, alongside Minister of Northern Economic Development George Pirie and Algoma-Manitoulin MPP Bill Rosenberg announced $12.6 million in funding to upgrade recreation facilities across northeastern Ontario while in Greater Sudbury, Ont., on July 18, 2025. (Neil Lumsden/X) Bill Rosenberg, MPP for Algoma-Manitoulin, echoed the sentiment, framing sports infrastructure as a tool for social cohesion. 'Investing in community sports isn't just about physical activity; it's about cultivating connection, inclusivity, and pride across generations,' he said. Next steps for Sudbury's twin-pad With provincial funding secured, Sudbury's twin-pad complex is expected to move forward after years of delays. The city will now focus on finalizing design and construction timelines, with the goal of creating a facility that serves both athletes and families. The Community Sport and Recreation Infrastructure Fund program remains open to applications from municipalities, Indigenous communities, and nonprofits seeking support for repairs or new builds. Ontario's total infrastructure spending under the fund is part of a larger $200 billion provincial commitment to highways, hospitals, and other critical projects. With files from journalist Alana Everson
